Dive into the archives.
- Berlin Steps in on Abkhazia
While Georgia-Russia tensions have mostly brought involved the US, EU and aforementioned two parties, Germany has stepped in with its own plan for peace in Abkhazia. A Spiegel article notes the plan consists of three phases,
Phase one of the German plan envisages a year of trust-building measures. These would include declarations renouncing violence and the [...]
- Germany ‘NSA” Update
A few days ago, I alerted readers to another proposed security reform in Germany which would centralize Germany’s signals intelligence gathering. While I still have found little in the press in English or German, this longer Spiegel article outlines the concerns it has raised and the mood in Germany a bit more.
Germany Plans to Centralize [...]
- A German NSA
Not long after proposing a comprehensive reform of Germany’s security policy, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in Germany is pushing for yet another security reform, combining Germany’s intelligence agencies under one roof. At the moment, German runs the following intelligence agencies:
- Federal Intelligence Service (BND or Bundesnachrichtendienst)
Military Security Service (MAD or Militärischer Abschirmdienst)
Federal Office for [...]
- Bad News for NATO from Germany
With questions about a two-tier system for NATO and concerns about certain members being unreliable or not sharing the burden, a ruling by the German Supreme Court comes as more bad news. The issue this time was the deployment of German AWACs along the Turkish border with Iraq in 2003. The article notes that:
Germany had [...]
- German NSC Sparks Controversy
In 1871, the many German states, previously divided and often at odds with each other, were united under the leadership of Prussia and Otto von Bismarck. Europe had long consisted of a strong France in the west, a divided series of weak states in central Europe and a strong Russia to the East. A united [...]
- The occupation and your job
Grendel sent in this interesting film strip by the famous war-time propagandist Frank Capra. The film was shown to American soldiers assigned to the occupying force in Germany after the second world war.
The opening statement of the film is apropos of the situation in Iraq:
“By your conduct and attitude while on guard inside Germany you [...]
- You’re 65 years late, thank God
...and very lucky for us.
In an ironic twist, a British team operating a World War II code-breaking computer has been beaten in a cipher-breaking contest by a German.
In the Cipher Challenge, a competition run by the U.K.’s National Museum of Computing on Thursday and Friday, the cipher-breaking computer Colossus had to decode encrypted radio communications [...]
- Banality of evil
Conspiracy — co-produced by HBO and BBC — gives a chilling peek at what might have happened at the Wannsee Conference in 1942 where the SS basically announced their solution to “The Jewish Question.” The film is brilliantly scripted and brilliantly acted by an all star cast including Kenneth Branagh and Stanley Tucci. You will [...]
- Tag der deutschen Einheit
Today, October 3rd, is the Day of German Unification celebrating the reunification of East and West. As the joke goes, East Germans celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall and West Germans mourn it. An unforgettable moment for the world, the effects of reunification, or as the Germans prefer “German Unity,” have been and are [...]
- Oktoberfest 2007
This past weekend I was again gone and thus not blogging. However, I didn’t forget CA readers while in Munich the past two days and snapped a few shots of the infamous Oktoberfest for one and all. Although Munich holds the largest such festival in the world the less known Cannstatter Wasen in Stuttgart is [...]
